The Queen Is Dead (The Immortal Empire)
Read The Queen Is Dead (The Immortal Empire) Online
Authors: Kate Locke
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This book is for my mom, who loved stories as much as I do, who taught me how to dream, and who wore her eccentricities like badges of honour. I didn’t thank her enough.
And it’s for my husband, Steve, because he believes in me even when I don’t.
There was a dead rat nailed to my door.
“Poor thing.” I grasped the thick spike and pulled it free of the heavy wood. The small furry corpse fell into my hand. It was still warm. Left during daylight hours. Cowards.
Probably the Human League. They were the only ones who blamed rats for the plague responsible for vampires, were-wolves, half-bloods, and… things like me. They also suffered from the mistaken belief that they were safe during the day. They weren’t. No more than we were safe from them at night.
Underneath the murdered rodent was a copy of the front page of
The Times
from last Monday. There was a photo of me–now stained with rat blood–leaving the house, and above it the headline:
MONSTER IN OUR MIDST: Frightened residents want goblin “queen” away from their children
. Of course, no names were given, because I might decide to exact
revenge upon those good citizens who hated me simply because of what I was.
In a way I understood way IڀI was frightened of me sometimes as well–but the press, and the Human League, made me sound like some kind of bogeyman. A child killer. It was becoming a tad tedious, to be honest.
I buried the rat–and the paper–in the back garden, where I’d buried the last two to have been left on my step. Since the neighbourhood of Leicester Square learned they had a goblin in their midst–to be exact, Xandra Vardan, the reluctant “Queen of Goblins”–they’d become a bit…
enthusiastic
in their desire to convince me to pack my bags.
I was about to throw the spike into the hole as well when I noticed a small scrap of fabric attached. Part of a shirt sleeve if I wasn’t mistaken. I pulled it off the iron and lifted it to my nose. Rat. Blood. Cotton. Newsprint… Ah, there it was.
Human.
Sometimes a superior sense of smell was a disgusting affliction, other times it came in rather handy. This was one of those times. I took another sniff and walked around to the front of the house.
I lived in what had once been an old public house in Leicester Square–still had the sign above the door. I stopped on the pavement and took a deep breath.
West
. That’s where the little tosser went.
I set off down the street. The sun was still sinking in the sky, casting the city and its inhabitants in a mellow summer glow. I squinted behind my sunglasses. Unlike my furry subterranean brethren, I could brave sunlight, a fact that would surprise my rat killer. It didn’t blister me or burn my eyes like it did to aristocrats–a term now used to describe vampires,
weres and even goblins, though goblins thought themselves separate. I needed dark glasses and sunscreen, but I was okay.
All around me humans hurried here and there, either on foot or by motor carriage. I’d lived in Leicester Square for two months now, ever since moving out of the house I used to share with my sister Avery. She was still pissed off at me for keeping secrets from her, and for being a goblin. As if I had a choice in the matter.
Perhaps choosing to live in a predominantly human neigh-bourhood wasn’t the most intelligent of decisions, given increasing human hostility, but it kept me reasonably far away from Queen Victoria’s spies, and that was what mattered. I’d earned the disfavour of Britain’s vampire monarch by being made queen by the goblins. Historically, the queens of Britain didn’t look kindly on other queens infringing on their territory.
People looked at me as they passed by. A halvie wasn’t that much of an oddity in these parts, though certainly not commonplace. Unfortunately word had got out, thanks to the rags, that there was a freaky new goblin in town. My photo had been in every paper a couple of months ago, first because of my love life, and then because of the scandal of my genes. I was something of a celebrity, though without the chat show appearances.
I had my guard up. This unusual heat was making people nervous, myself included. Some huey and halvie deaths over the summer, including Dede and a friend of hers from Bedlam, had the humans twitchy. The Queen’s jubilee in May hadn’t helped either. You could practically feel tension rising in the city.
A mother put herself between me and her child, as if she was any sort of protection if I decided I wanted to have the kid
for tea. I smiled at her, but kept walking, following the scent of my rodent killer. I didn’t want trouble–except with the person I was trailing.
I tracked him to an estate in Haymarket. It was one of those ki use of thonds that had terrace upon terrace of flats, but while his scent drifted up a set of stairs, it was strongest towards a small park area upwind, behind the three buildings.
I paused, stuffed my hair beneath my bowler hat so the unusual red didn’t immediately give me away, slouched my shoulders and set off toward the boys gathered around a jungle gym. My thick-soled boots, short skirt, stockings and corseted waistcoat didn’t look too expensive, and fitted in with current human fashion.
Six young blokes with hats pulled low over spot-riddled faces adorned with tatts and piercings looked up as I approached.
“Oi, what’s this?” One elbowed another.
“Nice tits.”
I rolled my eyes as they chuckled, thinking I couldn’t hear them. I could hear them breathing, little wanks.
“Hullo,” I said to the one whose stench filled my nostrils. He was probably seventeen, with sapphire-streaked blond hair that hung in his blue eyes and a silver stud in his cheek. He had spools in the sides of his nostrils, and cigarette smoke drifted out of them as he smirked at me.
“Hi,” he said back. “What are you looking for, little merk?”
I didn’t appreciate being referred to as a vaginal wig, no matter how trendy it was. “You, actually.” I pouted. “Don’t you recognise me?”
His friends chuckled when he did. “Should I?”
My left hand lashed out, catching him around the throat. His
startled expression made me grin. The world brightened just a little as I let my fangs out–the goblin in me making my sight keener, my hunger sharper. I managed to keep the bones in my face from shifting, however. Didn’t want the little lamb to pass out on me.
“Breaks my heart to think you might be murdering rats for other girls, my pretty boy.”
“Fuck me!” yelped one of the boys, scampering higher on the metal climbing bars.
I ignored him. He wasn’t a danger unless he decided to jump on me–which would just be stupid. The ones that needed watching were the ones who stayed close, even when they realised who–what–I was.
“Get lost,” I snarled, all fang and spit. Out of the corner of my eye I saw them withdraw further. I didn’t care if they watched, so long as they stayed out of it.
“It weren’t nothing personal,” rasped the boy.
I tilted my head, holding eye contact. He smelled good. Good enough to eat. I could take a bite from a place he’d never miss it… but I wouldn’t. I had yet to give in to the craving for human flesh.
“Hard not to take something like that personally, my friend. Surely you can see how I might be… upset?”
He swallowed hard against my palm, jerked his head in a nod. I was impressed that he hadn’t pissed himself yet. His face was turning purple. “He paid me.”
I eased up on the pressure. “What’s that?”
The kid drew a deep breath. “Some toff gave me a hundred quid to do it. He even gave me the rat.” His gaze flitted briefly from mine. He hadn’t liked killing the rat. It was something that was going to stick with him for a while.
I knew that feeling, though my moral code was slipping more and more every day. I wanted to kill this kid. His fear made my mouth tingle. It wasn’t the violence that got my salivary e tmy saliglands all aflutter–it was the idea of the blood, the meat. He wasn’t a prime specimen, and he reeked of drugs and stale fags, but he’d still taste ruddy good.
And I was starving.
“What did he look like?”
“I dunno. A toff.” I squeezed his throat again and his eyes bulged. “He was blond–almost albino. And pale. Blue eyes. Real thin. Aristo.”
My eyes narrowed, and I relaxed my fingers. “How could you tell?”
“Vamped out on me, didn’t he? All toothsome. Threatened to kill me if I said a word about it.”
“And yet here you are, telling me.” Either this kid wasn’t too bright, or…
“He weren’t nearly as scary as you.”
Well, that was something, wasn’t it? I released him altogether. He sagged in on himself as his feet hit the patchy grass, like a rag doll, hand going to his bruised throat. “What else?”
